Tuesday, June 14, 2011

Legacy

Princess Alera lives in medieval times and her seventeenth birthday is rapidly approaching, which is also the time she must choose a suitor and marry. Whomever she picks will be the next king and her father wants her to marry Steldor. Steldor is self-absored and cocky and Alera is not interested in him. She instead falls in love with Narian, who was captured by the enemy when he was a baby and has only recently returned to learn about his roots.

I didn't love this book, but I did like it a little bit. Yes, I'm waffling over it. I didn't love it because I had some problems with it. First, it was almost five hundred pages of very detailed prose (right down to what they ate at several different meals and feasts) and that made it quite boring at points. Second, and what bothered me the most, was the character of Alrea. She was raised in a kingdom where women have no purpose but to plan parties. Early on the in the book Alera admits that she should learn to fight, but as soon as her family puts a stop to her lessons she's done. She doesn't argue about or sneak lessons in. When battles start occurring in her kingdom, she doesn't sneak off to at least see them, if not heroically partake. SPOILER ALERT: What's worse is that she married the man she did not love because her father told her to. I was waiting for her to call it off in the end, but the book ends after the wedding. She was a female that did what was told of her in a time when women were repressed.

If you like the fantasy genre you'll probably like this book. I've never been one for fantasy and thus found it a little boring, though not boring enough to put off reading it. Since I obviously can't make up my mind, it gets three stars.